depth sounding

This video is part of the on- going series exploring the electromagnetic signature of place. This footage was captured in the Vedado neighborhood in Havana, Cuba, 11/2017

depth sounding, 2018, video, 3 min. 46 sec.

Turbulence Project

Images from a collaboration with ecologist, Lauren Sullivan, from our Sciart Bridge Residency in which we explored the potential affects of landscape form on turbulence and seed dispersal. These images investigate possible project forms- public art earthworks/ science research site and animated scientific data.

procession

From an on- going series exploring the electromagnetic signature of place- recorded in Trinidad, Cuba, 2017

resting velocities

signal decomposition

signal decomposition, 2018, Acrylic on Parachute Cloth, 3.5 X 5 Ft

infinite regress

infinite regress, 2018, Acrylic on Parachute Cloth, 22 X 30 in.

color is a degree of darkness

As society advances, the concept of place evolves. Technology opens new corridors both spatially and temporally. The intersection of physical space and digital space are known as informational territories (a term coined by André Lemos.) With new places being ‘made’ some of these older territories fall into abandon as technology moves beyond them. One such space is the vacant signal frequencies accessed by the antenna of CRT TVs. My work explores this portion of the Electromagnetic Spectrum particularly the radio and microwave frequencies and the subsequent ambient information found there.

"color is a degree of darkness" is part of a video series exploring specificity of place. It is comprised of stills taken from television static at a singular location, Seneca Lake near Geneva, NY. The video serves as a modern landscape- a portrait of place consisting of the unique electromagnetic signature of that environment. Television static is generated from, lightning, signal leakage, irradiance of architecture and the CMB (Cosmic Microwave Background) - the echo of the Big Bang. These images are extensively slowed and magnified to re-contextualize the experience of looking at static to one of contemplation. This process reveals a color field painting similarity as dark cloud like forms emerge and dissolve across the vertical striping of the RGB phosphors. Within the empty frequencies of this analog technology an imprint of natural phenomena can be amplified.

color is a degree of darkness, 2016, video, 2:27 min

color is a degree of darkness, 2016, field recording

erosion study

This is an experiment in generation loss. Exploring the loss of information through multiple scans and printings of the same file until all trace of the original image disappears and a neutral gray remains.

erosion study Novia Scotia, 2017

Static Fossil

As the analogue switch-off reaches completion, our televisions will solely derive signals from digital services. Accompanying this transition will be the disappearance of the familiar image of television static. This technological relic was the result of a lost broadcast signal. A weaker signal was immediately subject to interference. A disturbance that found its source in local weather, lightning, solar flares, signal leakage and even the residue of the Big Bang, namely the Cosmic Microwave Background Emission (CMB). In that in-between space, the polluted signal, we see the echo of the origin of the universe painted in the phosphors of red, green and blue (RGB).

Giant advertising billboards, with their affinity to television, are an appropriate larger- than- life venue for this concept. With the abundance of vacant billboards around the city, these displays could be seen as television screens that are turned off. Placing an image of static upon one site would amount to turning on one TV but not broadcasting anything recognizable. It provides a banner for the passing of an archaic technology.

The image is an information landscape. Originally painted in acrylic on parachute cloth at the scale of 4’ 8” x 16 ft, the work was photographically reproduced for the billboard, a translation that mirrors the analogue to digital conversion. Rethinking contemporary landscape painting, the work documents the individual attempt to engage the sublime quality of nature unseen, the universal forces at work outside of the borders of the visual spectrum.

Horizontal Retrace

“Horizontal Retrace” is a conceptual mural, constructed from painted bricks stacked against the main wall in the Art Lot (approximately 6 x 10 ft). Depicting the water surface from neighboring Gowanus Bay, the work is an exploration of erosion as it occurs both physically and digitally. The project takes its name from the process of image display in a television set, specifically, the return action of the electron beam as it scans one horizontal line of image information and moves back to begin the next. Painted in the artist’s studio the masonry bricks are then re-assembled on site, one horizontal layer at a time, with sections of brick reconfigured to create a fractured image. This transmission process compromises the fidelity of image. The brick wall form and fragmentation result in image entropy- a combined reference of information decay and the effect of time on place.

aphelion

the beginning runs backwards

Static Watercolors

This is a working series of watercolor sketches exploring the color perception of RGB banding.

acid static, 2017, Watercolor, 15.5in. X 21in.

afterglow, 2016, Watercolor, 15.5in. X 21in.

dead cities, 2016, Watercolor, 15.5in. X 21in.

deccan traps, 2016, Watercolor, 15.5in. X 21in.

galactic dinosaurs, 2015, Watercolor, 15.5in. X 21in.

legacy limitations, 2015, Watercolor, 15.5in. X 21in.

nonreciprocal interactions, 2015, Watercolor, 8in. X 8in.

remote future, 2015, Watercolor, 15.5in. X 21in.

standstill, 2015, Watercolor, 15.5in. X 21in.

grid landscapes

This series explores invented topographies using perspective and grid layout.

Seneca 634

“Seneca 634” was installed in the summer of 2010. The exterior acrylic mural reaches three stories high and measures 80 feet across. The mural was hand drawn and painted in 88 sections in the muralist’s Brooklyn studio. It is the culmination of years of research, planning, and grassroots funding.

The mural presents regional history as a cross-section of Seneca Lake. The title “Seneca 634” indicates the Lake’s depth of 634 feet. Geneva’s origins and chronology are depicted as geological layers. Located within the facsimile of a sonar screen, these strata are revealed by a beam of light sweeping counter-clockwise. This symbolic lens references the sonar technology of the Seawolf submarine, tested in Lake Seneca in the early 1990s.

The foundation layer of the mural is an ice wall, representing the glacial action that formed Lake Seneca. Geological time then yields to historical time with the appearance of the Seneca tribe. Burning embers mark the American army slash and burn campaign against the tribe during the revolutionary war. The purple wampum belt illustrates the federal structure of the Iroquois Nation, to which the Senecas belonged. The mirrored shapes of the American flag and the wampum belt suggest the debt owed by the American Constitution to this example.

Geneva’s history expands with the agricultural era. The flowers and fruits acknowledge the famed nurseries and rich soil. Moving upward, into the industrial age, buildings emerge from smoke. Of particular interest is the inclusion of the Union Religious Society Chapel, the first Afro-American church in Geneva in 1834. The Dairy Building represents the beginnings of the NYS Agricultural Experimental Station. And finally, just below the surface of the water is the famous F-80 Shooting Star, the first operational jet in the U.S. Air force. Pilots for the F-80 were extensively trained at Sampson Air force Base on Lake Seneca in the Korean War period.

The mural is unique not only for its colossal size and daring conceptual design but also for the distinct vocabulary of imagery. The artist created an innovative and intensely complex image composed entirely of elements native to the area. The mural displays brilliant colors, deep underwater hues, digitization and hyper-realistic renderings. These qualities are combined to create a striking encounter for the viewer, a direct confrontation through which a deep and personal understanding becomes possible.

Seneca 634, Outdoor Mural, 2011, Geneva, NY, 40 ft x 80 ft

Seneca 634, Outdoor Mural, 2011, Geneva, NY, 40 ft x 80 ft

Seneca 634, Outdoor Mural, 2011, Geneva, NY, Detail

Seneca 634, Outdoor Mural, 2011, Geneva, NY, Detail

Seneca 634, Outdoor Mural, 2011, Geneva, NY, Detail

Seneca 634, Outdoor Mural, 2011, Geneva, NY, Detail

Studio Photograph

Installation Shot

Structures

Outpost, 2012, Watercolor 60in. X 80in.

Voids

Beacons, 2011, Watercolor, 60in. X 80in.

Black Wave, 2011, Watercolor, 24in. X 14in.

Ammonia Cliffs, 2008, Watercolor, 72 X 54 in

Distant Shore, 2007, Watercolor, 60in. X 80in.

Tunguska Event, 2007, Watercolor, 60in. X 80in.

Day After Tree, 2007, Watercolor, 80in. X 60in.

Extinct Animals

Drawing interest from a post apocalyptic concept, these large- scale paintings provide a slow-motionglimpse of the time after. They specifically embody the moments or millennia post- event. By omitting the climax and freezing the aftermath, they examine the settling quality, the reassertion of Gravity, and a time unbound by human perception. The chosen vantage point indicates an observer’s overview, a semi- distant participant at the epicenter.

Here, the medium of watercolor is abused and recast to capture the abyssal plain of oblivion; a purgatory landscape littered with carcasses of forgotten archetypes, extinct animals, and lost histories. I excavate these forms from the accumulated layers of paint; they are the free associations I make from the remnants of the previously destroyed paintings underneath. The resulting exploration produces residual color and dense atmosphere that are the by-products of this search, a process of wet erasures and heavy over-painting.